The Uluguru Mountains, which are part of the Eastern Arc Mountains, is a hotspot for diversity and an important area for the conservation of biodiversity in Tanzania, but faces increasing disturbance due to anthropogenic activities leading to a high rate of forest degradation and fragmentation. Changes in habitat structure have caused significant changes in the faunal assemblage of the region. However, information on these effects in the Uluguru Mountains is currently lacking. We conducted a survey of the small rodent assemblage on the Uluguru Mountains in three different habitats: forest, fallow, and cultivated land along two elevation gradients: 900-1,400 and 1,500-2,000 m a.s.l. Additionally, we recorded the habitat structure for each transect by looking at grass cover, tree density and shrub density. Generalised linear mixed models were used to examine the effects of habitat structure on both species richness as well as abundance. Our results revealed that, even while species richness remained similar over the whole study area, the species composition significantly changed depending on habitat structure. This finding arose particularly from changes in the numbers of Praomys delectorum and Mastomys natalensis, with the latter more abundant in cultivated and fallow land but not in forest, where P. delectorum is more abundant. This outcome may indicate that an increase in forest degradation and expansion of agriculture could have an impact on rodent assemblage and potentially on their population dynamics.

Climate change, land degradation and invasive alien species (IAS) threaten grassland ecosystems worldwide. IAS clearing and grassland restoration would help to reduce the negative effects of IAS, restore the original vegetation cover and sustain livelihoods while contributing to climate change mitigation, but uncertain financial benefits to local stakeholders hamper such efforts. This study assessed where and when net financial benefit could be realized from Prosopis juliflora management and subsequent grassland restoration by combining ecological, social and financial information. Impacts of Prosopis invasion and grassland degradation on soil organic carbon (SOC) in nine sublocations in Baringo County, Kenya, were evaluated. Then the financial impacts of Prosopis removal and grassland restoration in the area were calculated and spatially explicit management scenarios for each sublocation modelled, combining geographical information derived from satellite images taken in different years of the invasion with SOC data and socio‐economic data collected in the sublocations. The expanding Prosopis distribution and density since 1995 have increased cumulated SOC storage on former bare land or degraded grasslands. On former pristine or restored grasslands, however, Prosopis invasion has reduced total SOC storage. Prosopis removal and grassland restoration are predicted to yield financial benefits through charcoal made from removed trees, increased cattle numbers and carbon credits. However, a trade‐off between increased SOC and net financial benefit was found. The predicted net SOC increase would contribute around one‐tenth, at most, to the net financial benefit. The available budget, based on Baringo households’ average willingness to pay, would enable removal, on average, of one‐fifth of Prosopis per sublocation in a single year. A larger area can be cleared if Prosopis is sparse than if it is dense. The analyses show that in some sublocations, households’ annual investments could result in restoration of all former grassland areas. Synthesis and applications. This study shows how integrating and linking detailed ecological, social and financial geodata to develop accurate and realistic invasive alien species management scenarios can illustrate costs and benefits of management interventions in a spatial context. Such scenarios should be used more extensively to support land management decisions.

In this longitudinal study we explore how changes in food environments have shaped the acquisition and consumption of wild foods among people living near forests. Our study conceptually improves food environment frameworks by including evidence on changes in wild food consumption. We used data collected in both the dry and rainy seasons in 2009 and 2021/2022 in four villages in the East Usambara Mountains, Tanzania. Across data collections, we conducted qualitative interviews, focus groups and repeated household surveys, including questions on dietary intake, food sources, agricultural practices, and use of wild resources. We found that the proportion of people who collected wild foods within the past seven days had declined from 90 to 61% in the dry season and from 99 to 72% in the wet season. The main reasons were 1) decreased availability caused by, for example, loss of biodiversity, 2) lack of access due to government forest regulations, and 3) increased desirability towards marked-based foods. Our results show how changes in both availability, access and desirability of wild foods have shifted dietary choices from wild foods towards cultivated and purchased foods. Also, we see less widespread consumption of sentinel food groups such as dark green leafy vegetables. Our results highlight the need for an additional dimension in existing food environment frameworks: “Legal access to wild resources” that would cover access to wild foods. This dimension is important as loss of legal access and declining consumption can have negative dietary implications, since the most commonly consumed wild foods, such as leafy vegetables, are nutritionally important.